The SFMTA, after raising fares, cutting positions, and slashing service, is asking its vendors to reduce their invoices by 3% or more to help close the nearly $22m deficit.Â The SFMTA has until June to close its budget gap.

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I wonder if SFMTA opened up transit to competition that they could not close the gap. There may be private transit providers willing to service main transit corridors and some members of the public willing to pay a premium for good service. I am thinking of the jitneys that operated on Mission street in my youth. It was a fast comfortable service. Of course public transit would still need to service unprofitable routes.

This model doesn’t make sense from a revenue perspective. Moving riders to private, premium priced transit will only open up a larger gap in Muni’s balance sheet. Muni is already a very efficient system as far as moving people around is concerned, they just need to cut costs and find more efficiencies while boosting customer service.